stained glass window
by our dancing days
Summary: He leaves kisses like track marks, and paints you like a canvas, and still you can't bring yourself to care. / James, Narcissa, and living forever. freeverse.


**Title: **stained glass window

**Summary: **He leaves kisses like track marks, and paints you like a canvas, and still you can't bring yourself to care. / James, Narcissa, and living forever.

**Notes: **This was written for Camp Potter, and it is an AU with arty!James which I completely adore. I hope you enjoy!

* * *

"The sky was dark and you were clear - could you feel my footsteps? And would you shatter, would you shatter? Would you?" - Great Lake Swimmers, 'Your Rocky Spine.'

* * *

There is once a picture;

it hangs in the Headmaster's office

for seventy years.

Maybe it is symbolic, or maybe not,

because, like children, nobody thinks to ask.

Two people, dressed in blue,

have their backs to the world

and hold hands,

staring out at what might've been a castle,

or a cottage,

but, like most fairytales,

the details have been lost along the way.

The stained glass window

is broken long before I get here, dear -

_seventy years bad luck._

They don't talk like magic portraits,

but sometimes their fingers

twitch

so though remembering.

The wind rages through their hair,

and something _magical _and _colourful _paints them like a rainbow.

It's -

clichéd.

And terribly, horribly ordinary.

They are going to live forever, and maybe,

just maybe,

it means something else.

(( maybe not ))

.

He paints mountains and moves them

so that he can curl you

into his heart.

The wind he whispers into your soul

curls your hair

and colours it like the rainbow.

He wraps his little pinky finger around your painted neck

to pull you back from cutting yourself

on glass and words and paints and the past.

(Doesn't it make you sick?

How he paints every eyelash like his life depends on it,

yet he can't even be bothered to

draw you a heart.)

The footsteps he trails leave prints

in that empty space that used to hold a ribcage

and scars on your paper wrists,

and darling, you are a stained glass window to be admired,

not shattered,

and he will break you, one day.

You are a landscape,

baby,

but half-finished and half-forgotten

and made up by halves of this and that;

a patchwork doll

who never knew any different.

Narcissa, dear,

people touch your lips and whisper about watercolours -

people caress your cheeks

and they say they picture porcelain -

they break your heart and they say you fall like glitter.

You have something to be treasured

and left as a trophy,

pride of place on some poor boy's mantelpiece.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

No one else is going

to treat you like a art gallery exhibition,

rather than a statue in the corner;

no one, but

_him._

.

James, dear, now he is a masterpiece in himself.

His fingers are dotted with ink stains,

and charcoal lines the life lines

on his palms.

(He is going to live forever.)

He used to paint red and green and fire,

which twisted off of the canvas

and into the wind,

which poisoned and engulfed and left him broken.

But now, you see him -

his eyes twinkle with the blue

on his paper,

and the yellow that shines like sunlight.

(Do you really think he isn't going to leave you

as soon as _red&green _even smile?)

He has changed for the better, you tell yourself, darling -

maybe.

Maybe not.

Either way, after you, he walks like a dancer

and smiles like a poet,

and his fingers twitch around your hair

and under them, it feels like silk.

He is marble and charcoal

and you are stained glass and watercolours.

(He is immortal and you are - _breakable.)_

His friends laugh and point and they ignore the way his eyes

shimmer when he paint.

And maybe he cares too much -

he still plays Quidditch and winks at Lily Evans

and maybe

(not)

you don't care at all.

.

This is your life, now, sweetheart;

was it always like this?

So unbelievably _Romeo and Juliet?_

You are content with Slytherin and ideals

and your place on the mantelpiece;

you were perfectly happy

playing porcelain.

(So was I, so was I, but look at us nice, darling, look at us now!)

But he came with his paints and his talent

and his glasses and

_his love for goddamned Lily Evans, _

and you couldn't resist.

In another life -

in another life your blue eyes would have dulled,

that hurricane would have knocked you off your pedestal,

and you would have lost,

lost,

lost _him, _lost _you, _lost the whole _goddamned war. _

Look at you here, now, sweetie;

you are blue and rainbow and watercolours,

swirling on the edges

of a canvas he's yet to bring to life.

He leaves kisses like track marks,

and paints you like a canvas,

and still you can't bring yourself to care.

You are a glass ornament,

and if he breaks you,

well, it's not my fault, now is it?

I only tried to warn you against Gryffindor and greyscale madness;

however,

in the end,

you tried to warn me about Muggleborns,

and look how that turned out, princess.

(Some stained glass windows

were made to break.)

Your immortality won't last forever, dear,

so maybe you were right, after all.

(( but maybe not ))


End file.
